Health
FAITH Okpohworho, the Director, Department of Women Affairs, Delta Ministry of Women Affairs, Community and Social Development, has said that advocacy for family planning is service to humanity.
Okpohworho said this on Monday in Asaba, when the Chairperson, Advocacy Core Group (ACG), Mrs Rachael Obodo-Obunseli, paid an advocacy visit to the ministry to seek support for family planning in the state to mark the World Contractive Day (WCD).
WCD is a day set aside to enlighten the public, especially couples, on the need to embrace contraceptives to properly space out the number of children for healthy families.
She said that if not for advocacy, many people would have perished in ignorance, adding that keying into government programmes and policies had brought a lot of awareness to the people to solve their problems.
She added that “I want to assure you that the ministry and the commissioner for women affairs are receptive to policies and programmes meant to help our women and young people in the society.
“And for the advocacy, creating awareness and sensitisation, I want to assure you that it is part of our policy and mandate to reach the people with the programmes and benefits they can get in both the urban and rural communities.
“And to our young girls, to enable them protect themselves, I urge you to sustain this advocacy.”
Earlier, Obodo-Obunseli said that the group’s visit was to seek the support of the commissioner and the ministry to ensure that the family planning needs in the state were met.
She also urged the ministry to support the advocacy on family planning to get more funding from the state government.
She said “we are here to seek partnership with the Ministry of Women Affairs to drive the push on family planning in the state.
“We want to reiterate our call for support to ensure that every young adult has access to family planning in the state.
“It is no longer alien to speak to adolescents about family planning and this has helped to prevent unplanned pregnancies and sexually related diseases.”
She called for increased awareness to promote the use of contraceptives and other family planning methods to sustain the advocacy.
“This is why we have come to use your platform; the department of women affairs and other platforms to reach out to adolescents and to attain the family planning needs of the state.
“Currently, the state government has made a budget line of N25 million for only family planning in the Ministry of Health, and we are saying it is not enough.
“We are asking that you support the initiative and through your memos, the government will see the need to increase the funding of family planning to enable service delivery workers to carry out their duties unhindered.”
On need for contraceptives, Mrs Jean Adebayo, the Assistant Director, Department of Women Affairs in the ministry said the World Contractive Day is a day to enlighten the public on the need to embrace contraceptives to space out children.
She said that the frequency at which sexual relationships resulted into pregnancies was alarming due to people’s inability to control the desire for sex.
“Because of this, contraceptives were developed to help people to space their children.
“There are women who get pregnant every year from their husbands and this make them weak and makes it difficult for them to take care of the next child.
“Before now, our mothers used breastfeeding to check pregnancy and for child spacing but it is not working for many women today as most women get pregnant while breastfeeding their babies.
“So, contraceptives have come and with proper use, it can help in child spacing; you use it when you don’t want to become pregnant and stop use when you are ready for the next child.”
NAN
– Sept. 29, 2020 @ 07:54 GMT /
Tags: a service to humanity — Official World Contraceptive Day: Advocacy for family planning
